Statistics Canada announced that the country's railways carried a total of 31 million tonnes of freight in May, up 12.1% from the same month last year.

The Federal agency reports that total rail freight originating in Canada increased 11.8% from the same month last year to 27.8 million tonnes.

Non-intermodal freight increased 10.5% to 298,000 carloads in May. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 24.6 million tonnes, up 11.4% from the same month last year, with increases in tonnages of wheat (+40.1%), fuel oils and crude petroleum (+95.1%), potash (+25.2%), coal (+9.4%) and iron ores and concentrates (+4.5%) and drops in tonnages of canola (-5.1%), newsprint (-24.7%), other cereal grains (-8.2%) and sand, gravel and crushed stone (-8.6%).

Intermodal freight loadings rose 12.6% to 210,000 units from May 2016 to May 2017. The gain stemmed from a 12.5% increase in containers-on-flat-cars and a 23.2% gain in trailers-on-flat-cars. In terms of weight, intermodal traffic increased 14.5% to 3.2 million tonnes.

Freight traffic received from the United States rose 15.4% to 3.2 million tonnes as a result of a 17.7% increase in non-intermodal freight and an 8.6% decline in intermodal freight from the United States.